Document finishing systems are used for a variety of printing, compiling, and binding applications.
J. Soler, K. Moore, D. Miller, and R. Eisemann, Apparatus and Method of Controlling Interposition of Sheet in a Stream of Imaged Substrates, U.S. Pat. No. 5,489,969 (Feb. 6, 1996) disclose a technique for controlling the interposition of one or more special sheets into a stream of regular imaged substrates. In one example, the insertion of special sheets is determined by preset time intervals, which can be adjusted to accommodate the timing of hardware, such as printers. In another example, the interposition of a special insert sheet with the stream of imaged substrates is maintained by comparing the distance between a special insert sheet fed to the stream and an adjacent regular imaged substrate with a predefined tolerance, and adjusting the feed times of subsequent special insert sheets. While Soler et al. disclose complicated time and distance spacing between special sheets and a stream of regular substrates, they fail to disclose a comprehensive solution to providing an information map to compile an entire hybrid document.
D. Platteter and J. Carter, System Architecture for Attaching and Controlling Muftiple Feeding and Finishing Devices to a Reproduction Machine, U.S. Pat. No. 5,629,775 (May 13, 1997) disclose an electronic image processing apparatus which includes a marking machine, a source of copy sheets, a controller, and a plurality of resources, in which each of the resources includes an associated processor for storing data related to the operational timing of the associated resource. While Platteter et al. disclose a system architecture for attaching multiple finishing devices to a reproduction machine, they fail to provide a document finishing device for assembling hybrid documents originating from a plurality of printers.
C. Conrad, R. Coons, and T. Cherry, Sheet Inserter and Methods of Inserting Sheets into a Continuous Stream of Sheets, U.S. Pat. No. 5,272,511 (Dec. 21, 1993) disclose a sheet inserter that "inserts special insert sheets into a continuous stream of sheets. The insert sheet and the continuous stream of sheets are then conveyed to a final destination, where the sheets are compiled into a stack. While Conrad et al. disclose the insertion of special sheets within a continuous stream of sheets, they fail to disclose the use of a mixed format finishing device that collates sheets from a number of sources in response to self-contained instructions residing on one of the sheets.
The disclosed prior art systems and methodologies thus provide basic document finishing systems, but fail to provide a mixed format document finishing device in which documents to be compiled include self-contained instructions which are used to compile the document. The development of such a mixed format finishing device would constitute a major technological advance.